Ask John: Why Do Americans Think Moe is Killing Anime?
Question:
Why do western fans say that moé is what’s stopping creativity of the anime industry when it clearly shows that’s what has been one of the most successful genre in Japan right now?
Answer:
The prevalence of moé themed anime in recent years – shows that seem to exist primarily to place adorable little girls (or sometimes boys) in front of otaku viewers rather than concentrate on telling a compelling story or practicing significant artistic creativity – has literally been a double edged sword. The very prominence of the genre is evidence of its popularity in Japan. Sponsors don’t keep funding productions that don’t generate profits. At the same time, the argument may be legitimately made that animation studios which continue to develop conventional moé anime at the behest of corporate sponsors don’t challenge themselves to develop progressive and revolutionary animation or unique and creative narratives. The excess emphasis on a singular style of anime quickly leads to stagnation and boredom for both animators and viewers.
That summation concisely encapsulates the observation of the critical American fan community. American viewers have never been very fond of moé anime. Even before the genre term “moé” existed the American fan community largely recoiled from cute shows like Fairy Princess Minky Momo, Cosmic Baton Girl Comet-san, Ojamajo Doremi, and Di-Gi-Charat. American viewers have always been more receptive to sci-fi, action, adventure, and horror anime – from Starblazers and Battle of the Planets to Robotech and Voltron to Gundam Wing, Cowboy Bebop, Naruto, and Bleach. So some degree of American opposition to moé may be motivated by personal interest rather than empathetic anxiety. The actual situation in Japan, however, is more complex than the typical American supposition.
An objective look at the output of Japan’s anime production industry reveals that moé anime doesn’t account for as large a percentage as American criticism would suggest. Only about a quarter of the current Japanese TV season’s anime can be considered moé. Similarly, only about five of the winter 2010 Japanese TV season’s 20+ new anime appear to be potentially moé shows. The continued release of series such as Kuchu Buranko, Tatakau Shisho, Winter Sonata, and Aoi Bungaku, along with early 2010 titles including Cobra, Dance in the Vampire Bund, Durarara, and Katanagatari demonstrate that the Japanese production industry is actually developing a number of serious, artistic, and challenging shows equally to its number of moé productions. However, a look at Japanese DVD sales data reveals that sales of moé anime like K-On, Hayate no Gotoku 2nd Season, the Kanokon OVA series, Kodomo no Jikkan 2gakki, Suzumiya Haruhi, GA Geijutsuka Art Design Class, Saki, and Hetalia ~ Axis Powers demolish the DVD sales of stylistically opposite shows like Eve no Jikan, Basquash, Natsu no Arashi, Rideback, Shikabane Hime, and Tokyo Magnitude 8.0. The amount of moé anime produced and released in Japan actually isn’t disproportionately large. Moé anime merely seems more prominent because it’s much more popular than most other contemporary productions.
That contributes to the American perception that moé is literally crowding out other types of anime and compromising the creativity of Japan’s anime production industry. The prominent success of shows like K-On, Bakemonogatari, and Saki overshadows shows like Higashi no Eden, Canaan, and Sengoku Basara that are also very successful. It would be unfair and inaccurate to say that anxiety about the impact of moé anime is entirely unfounded and unreasonable. At the same time, I think that American fear that moé will be the death of anime is exaggerated and motivated by an obscured view of the complete situation and the influence of personal subjectivity. I think it’s interesting that I’ve read criticism from a number of Japanese critics and observers that cite diminishing creativity as a threat to the future of anime production, yet I’ve not encountered a single Japanese animator or critic cite any particular genre of anime as contributing to the stagnation of the industry. Maybe it’s attributable to Japanese politeness, but it’s only Americans who seem to be specifically calling moé a threat to the future of anime, not Japanese animators themselves. Japan’s anime industry undeniably does face pressing challenges, and I won’t say that the prominence of moé should be entirely dismissed as cause for concern. But I do think that the American perception that moé is a cancer slowly destroying the anime industry is exaggerated.
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Excellent points. This is exactly what I have been thinking for a long time, but I could never find a way to put it into words. I definitely feel that due to the fandom and the large amount of moe-type merch available, that it’s natural for one to perceive moe as being much larger than it actually is. Great article!
To put it in a more concise response, American fans view moé as the reality television of anime. It’s cheap, it’s shallow, and it’s exceptionally cost effective. It doesn’t actually make up the majority of broadcast time, but it’s something that gets a lot of attention for the amount of effort that goes into it and its simple existence deprives other shows of consumer sales.
Personally, what’s killing anime for me is the over-reliance of characters who look like they shop at Hot Topic.
“when it clearly shows that’s what has been one of the most successful genre in Japan right now?”
Um, it’s not really successful, just profitable. There is a difference.
“Even before the genre term “moé†existed the American fan community largely recoiled from cute shows like Fairy Princess Minky Momo, Cosmic Baton Girl Comet-san, Ojamajo Doremi, and Di-Gi-Charat.”
I don’t really consider Doremi and Di-Gi-Charat to be “moe”. But yeah, that “cute” look managed to even kill off Tutu’s sales. We got enough of that shit from Disney, so why do we want the Japan version, outside of Hello Kitty and Totoro? But then those properties actually cater to our inner children, too.
As for moe in general, well, if that shit pays the bills for the stuff we actually want to see, then I’ll accept it. It’s no worse than domestic companies dabbling in hentai to acquire titles like Utena and Evangelion.
@Kurai_Seraphim:
The last line is where that argument really falls apart. Anime isn’t only competing against other anime, it’s competing against the entire entertainment media market. If they didn’t make moe anime, the fans of that genre won’t automatically transfer to other genres based on some “well, I’ve just got to buy anime!” logic. And if it weren’t for the high Japanese sales that the moe genre seems to generate, would there even be sufficient funding to support those other genres? Not to mention there’s something really odd about an argument that basically says “take away what people want to buy, and people will buy more of things they don’t want as badly”. How does that count as a “win” for the industry?
In the end, when people use that sort of logic, what I think is really meant is “it deprives me of a greater variety of shows that I’d like”. But as John often points out, there are a lot of shows every season that would appeal to the more traditional “American taste”, but these tend to slip under the radar. People just focus on the stuff that gets the most attention and assume the whole market is going to hell in a handbasket with “moe” to blame.
I suspect the reason Japanese animators won’t specifically blame moe for the decline in anime creativity is because that’s a sort of abstract way of blaming your audience’s tastes for your own lack of ability to make products they’ll buy. That sort of defies common sense. As much as anime is art, it’s also a commercial product; companies fund anime productions in hopes of making their money back through sales of something or another. So the “creativity problem” is as much about the anime itself as it is about finding ways of appealing to their audience’s tastes and causing them to open their wallets and want to buy stuff. The moment they decide “our audience is the problem”, they had better be ready with a more palatable alternative. I don’t think they have one right now.
So it’s probably more realistic to say that moe isn’t really a symptom of the industry’s problem, it’s a representation of the current market’s interest. How the industry reacts to and forms itself around that interest is at issue. And the issue that the American audience tends to have with this process is that the market doesn’t necessarily form around *their* specific interests, so they choose to blame any perceived declines on this rather than any of the other key factors at play. This despite the fact that the collapse of the North American market certainly contributed to getting us to this point in the first place.
John, I think you’ve somewhat missed the primary concern with moe. In my view at least, the problem with moe is not simply that it is popular but that it is popular primarily with the most hardcore end of the otaku market. Generally speaking, it only serves to satisfy the people who are already hardcore fans but doesn’t create many new fans. The industry may be able to turn a reliable profit off of it’s existing otaku base with moe for now. However, this is a group that is already aging and shrinking as it is. Furthermore, as the industry shifts more and more to an otaku oriented focus, moe’s profitability will only become greater and greater relative to less otaku oriented shows. This in turn will cause more otaku focused shows to be produced and less shows with mainstream appeal. This cycle repeats and the industry shifts further and further toward the otaku. Ultimately, with fewer and fewer new fans coming in this leads to the market shrinking slowly away. I’m not saying this will happen overnight. It’s just concerning because assuming the industry continues to follow the basic rules of profitability, and the otaku don’t suddenly experience a shift in taste there is no reason I can see that this process wont continue.
@relentlessflame
I wasn’t actually taking said position so much as summarizing what the average American fan position is.
That said, I think moe is just the modern equivalent of the bouncy boobs of the 80s and the wannabe deep psychological episode 26 trend of the late 90s. It’s a characteristic of today’s anime that spawned from adapting dating sims and visual novels into anime not unlike how Hollywood survives off of adapting comic books and teen novels. It’s simple, it’s established, and it’s very safe.
Moe anime in general may be a reflection of what the Japanese audience wants, but it’s still pandering and it’s getting a lot of press. This annoys American fans. It doesn’t mean the industry is dying; it just makes it a lot less interesting.
arguments like “trend X is killing Y artform!” usually say more about the ignorance and laziness of the people saying it than it does about the artistic landscape itself.
It’s like condemning the entirety of the world’s current musical output by taking one listen at _Soulja Boy_ and arriving at the assumption that everything’s gone to hell in a handbasket. It’s like looking at the Hollywood special effects blockbusters that inevitably roll around every summer and assuming that there are no good films being made anymore.
That’s just ignorance and laziness. If you _really_ cared about finding sophisticated works, you would be finding them in abundance and not arriving at the conclusion that such things are not made anymore. If you _really_ cared about finding non-moe works and “progressive” animation, you’d be spending more time actually watching them rather than being a hyperbolic doomsayer in the fandom.
Mature industries like commercial film, music and animation are too diverse to simply sum up with some notion of a single trend “taking over”. The things that happen to be the most visible are only a few trees in the forest, so to speak… especially in the case of moe since its appeal is rather niche IMO. It’s just iconic, recognizable and heavily merchandised so you happen to “see” it everywhere.
If you want to know what’s “killing” the anime industry if anything, it’s more about the mundane stuff (business practices, hiring/management, etc.) than it is about what’s visible to the consumer.
seanny: Souljaboy is fun. It’s crap like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0Gs4xGw1Eg which is the equivalent of moe.
“Mature industries like commercial film, music and animation are too diverse to simply sum up with some notion of a single trend “taking overâ€. ”
Disagree there. Commercial film’s dominated by hack directors who are given insane budgets to present sappy bs like “Dances with Smurfs”; music’s dominated by talentless ugly fucks who get play because they cater to people who consider American Idol to be a form of art; and [American] animation is dominated by uninspired Shrek-like fairy tales and talking animals.
I still don’t know what the heck moe is really. Alls I know is we haven’t seen anything ground-ish breaking in anime for awhile. Something like Ergo Proxy or Texhnolyze. You know the shows you never forget and even people who don’t like anime or ”cartoons” will watch once they get a glimpse of a trailer…..
@seanny
“arguments like ‘trend X is killing Y artform!’ usually say more about the ignorance and laziness of the people saying it than it does about the artistic landscape itself.”
Arguments like this say more about the ignorance and laziness of the people saying it as well. After all, what is it but lazy to simply call the opposition names to make up for the weakness in your own argument. An argument that belies a complete ignorance of what people’s actual concerns with moe are. The only people who look at a couple moe anime and declare all of anime to be ruined are idiots. Pointing to them is equivalent to pointing to the man in birch-wood pants, chained to a tree and declaring all environmentalism stupid.
Yuki: I wouldn’t call Ergo Proxy and Texhnolyze “groundbreaking” exactly (Ergo in particular felt like an 80s / early 90s anime), but there’s Kaiba & Casshern Sins if you’re simply looking for more dark, obtuse sci-fi. Moe has many context-sensitive definitions, but in this discussion it’s simply being used to refer to any/all bishoujo anime it seems like.
GATS: the world of music is endlessly diverse and, with the advent of cheap home studios and internet distribution, highly accessible to both artists and listeners. It’s absurd to sum up the music industry with American Idol. That’s just one phenomenon in an endless sea that’s becoming increasingly difficult to quantify. There’s no “domination” occurring– the music world is too big for that. Hollywood film is much more production-heavy of course, but I don’t feel that it’s “dominated” by summer blockbusters since lots of other films (of varying scale, appeal and quality) are constantly being produced as well.
American-animated features are blockbuster-dominated though, I’ll give you that. The appeal of animation in US culture is too limited to support anything else I think.
ikillchicken: What you’ve said is too general and abstract. “You’re an idiot for calling idiots idiots”? Okay. All I’m saying is: if you can’t find what you’re looking for in the output of a diverse industry, the problem lies with you simply not caring enough to find it. Blaming the most visible thing for the lack of whatever it is that fits your particular taste is a waste of effort and totally dishonest– yet this kind of sentiment is all too common. Moe killing/harming/dominating the anime industry or whatever is just another one of those things.
ikillchicken: also I wasn’t originally replying to you really, more to the original Ask John question of “Why do western fans say that moé is what’s stopping creativity of the anime industry?”. Your original comment is pretty interesting but it makes a boatload of assumptions about what generates new fans and how that affects the industry. Let’s say bishoujo anime does not generate new fans and, in the future, less bishoujo anime is produced, maybe forcing some studios of lower-end bishoujo anime to close.
Part of the problem with this thinking is the assumption that bishoujo is taking the place of other types of content (rather than increasing the total size of the industry), as if you eliminated all the bishoujo anime tomorrow, the industry would respond with an equal torrent of Cowboy Bebops and Ghost in the Shells or whatever. Really all they’re doing is just catering to the tastes of consumers. When “moe” exploded, the number of anime series followed suit.
I imagine if bishoujo stopped being profitable tomorrow, you’d see a lot less _other_ anime as well since studios will find it more difficult to be profitable. If that’s true, you can say that bishoujo is sustaining the industry rather than killing it. If interest in bishoujo/moe goes away, then that’s the way it has to be. If former hardcore fans evolve into some new type of fan, the anime industry will respond by adapting the new sensibilities and stories of the fandom’s indie comics & games & whatnot. Otherwise it was not meant to be.
The anime industry strikes me as relatively organic since much of it is fandom-derived, or at least derived from the much much larger and more diverse manga industry. If you hate moe/bishoujo anime with a vengeance, I think the blame lies with the fans rather than the industry for engineering a certain type of fan. If every _commercial_ anime/manga/game/figure studio burned down to the ground tomorrow, moe/bishoujo (along with everything else) will live on in the fandom’s indie output.
Saying that bishoujo/moe is some out-of-nowhere fan-atrophying fad that swooped down upon a previously vibrant anime industry, pushed a lot of other fan-generating content aside, and will eventually collapse and take Japan’s cultural affinity for iconic/symbolic storytelling (read: their “manga culture”) down with it, is too specific a scenario to assume without a lot of backup
You know, in the end, I think all of this is sort of a sign of the times. I mean, there have always been sort of three “tiers”: there’s the audience, the fanbase, and the customers (the ones who actually buy product). Back in the day when anime was all hand-drawn and expensive to make, the best strategy was to get as broad of an audience as possible in hopes of appealing to that small fraction of fans who will end up buying stuff. Let’s say that for every 1000 viewers, 10 people buy “something”, and 1 buys “a lot” (or who knows what the real ratio was/is). And because merchandise alone wasn’t enough to fund it, you still needed to monetize your audience through advertising, hence the broad-appeal approach. It’s the “anime as prime-time TV” model.
Then computers and the Internet came around (bringing outsourcing with them) and drove the cost of producing anime way down. It also increased the direct access production companies had to their customers, and sped up the “feedback cycle”. So now, rather than making shows that appeal to as broad an audience as possible in the “hope” of achieving a good “conversion rate”, it now becomes possible to build a show precisely around what the customers want to buy. Because of the dramatically lower costs, you can forgo the “broad audience” idea entirely (no need to make money off ads) and rely entirely on merchandise sales. That whole concept wouldn’t have even been feasible back in the day, but is now rather commonplace. Combined with a powerful and effective marketing strategy (after all, merchandising is the whole point for these shows), it gives the impression that these niche shows dominate the market, even though the TV ratings tell an entirely different story. This new sort of anime follows the “anime as late-night infomercials” model, which is entirely separate from the old “prime-time” way of thinking.
So I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that the actual customer base for anime (in terms of buying anime merchandise) has always been a rather small niche market, but it’s only recently that they’ve been able to afford to design entire shows to serve only that demographic. If we want to see a return to more broadly-targeted shows that think outside the “niche”, you’d have to return to a model where the TV networks and mainstream advertisers are more in control of the production process and providing more of the investment (since their approach is also “appeal to millions, sell to a few”). And to do that, they’d need to be convinced that anime is more appealing than whatever else they’re currently airing in prime-time to pull in the ratings.
In the end, that whole broad-reach advertising model is slowly falling by the wayside as more and more of the media market shifts to the Internet and more targeted approaches. In fact, the successful show Hetalia Axis Powers ended up forgoing TV entirely and relied instead only on streaming to the Internet and to mobile phones; it’s one of the top-selling anime series on DVD in Japan this year. The idea of building shows to reach a specific niche audience and using inexpensive production techniques and delivery vehicles to make reaching that small audience still worth your while is basically what “new media” is all about. Perhaps anime was just a bit ahead of its time.
seanny:
I wasn’t saying Ergo or Texhnolyze were groundbreaking. I might have implied it though from my own opinion. How can Ergo feel like it came from a time era in Anime history? I’m pretty sure there wasn’t 3D integrated much into the 80’s early 90’s anime if at all. If anything Ergo should remind you of countless movie and art references. Kaiba and Cassherns sins are far off from the two shows I mentioned. I’m not looking for something particularly dark just something which is great in all areas. Realistic proportioned characters(Design). Music that fits the show. Interesting story and characters.
Anyway I suppose I’m far off topic here but my point is I’m not so bothered about Moe I’m more bothered about finding anime that interests me. Last thing that did was Death Note. It was only Natural that DN would become so big.
Seanny:
“If that’s true, you can say that bishoujo is sustaining the industry rather than killing it.”
Oh I absolutely agree in the short term. In the difficult situation the industry is in, being able to produce these kind of shows that are low risk and can pretty much be counted on to turn a solid profit is very beneficial. Without a doubt it is these shows are playing a major role in sustaining the industry. Again though, my concern lies with how ‘sustaining’ really is the word. In the long term things are only going to continue to shrink unless the industry keeps creating plenty of shows like the ones from the 80’s and 90’s that brought people into the fandom in the first place. Now as you said, the industry still is producing a decent amount of this stuff. (It’s argue is a fair bit less and on average on a lot cheaper budget than in the past though). In any case though, the concern is not so much that otaku are buying all moe shows but rather that they are not buying the other stuff. I’m certainly willing to live and let live if they can do both. If not though and the core fandom isn’t really supporting the more creative titles then we definitely have a problem. The less profitable this stuff is the less we’ll see.
“I think the blame lies with the fans rather than the industry for engineering a certain type of fan.”
Oh don’t worry. I place plenty of blame on the fans.
“In any case though, the concern is not so much that otaku are buying all moe shows but rather that they are not buying the other stuff. I’m certainly willing to live and let live if they can do both. If not though and the core fandom isn’t really supporting the more creative titles then we definitely have a problem. The less profitable this stuff is the less we’ll see.”
– ikillchicken
“Otaku” aren’t just a “purchasing force”, they’re fans with their own priorities and tastes. Why should they buy shows that they’re not as interested in out of some desire to “support the sustainability and creativity of the industry”? Buying anime is a hobby, not an obligation. I guess this is more to say, isn’t it our job as fellow customers to support those sorts of shows with our own money so that the industry doesn’t have to be so dependent only on “otaku” to survive? You can’t blame the fans for buying what they like; after all, anime is expensive, and you only collect the things you really want to own. The system would work fine if enough people with varied tastes would keep buying the shows they enjoyed. So the question really is more about why fans of these other apparently “under-represented” genres aren’t supporting the shows they like to the same extent. And if the fanbase for those sort of shows isn’t sufficiently large to support the production costs anymore, why should they keep being produced anyway? Sometimes things just go out of style. That being said, I tend to think it’s all cyclical, so there’s always the possibility of a revival of certain genres in years to come. It all depends on what people are interested in.
“You can’t blame the fans for buying what they like”
I can blame them for having shitty taste in what they like though.
“And if the fanbase for those sort of shows isn’t sufficiently large to support the production costs anymore, why should they keep being produced anyway?”
They shouldn’t. This is exactly what fans of these shows are worried about and why they may view moe as ‘killing the industry’ or at least, the aspects of the industry that interest them.
Frankly, we’re not only having a problem with “moe”, but also with what I am now calling “ero-moe”, erotic anime, basically, with underage girls as the main impetus of it all.
I mean, what am I reading in this very blog, but an anime out of Japan where the main character is a middle-school girl who is trying to convince everyone the merits of wearing sexy underwear?
Am I reading this crap right??
I’m really beginning to consider whether not only to get out of anime fandom completely, but start to actually alert authorities as to some of the stuff coming over here!
This is child porn!! Strike Witches too, and Funimation licensed this garbage!
This is why some people are turning against anime, and moe in particular. The envelope is being pushed, and, with that, so are the behaviors of the fandom.
Frankly, it’s disgusting, and all goes back to that this stuff is cheap to make in a market where it’s more desireable to rip it off from the Internet.
“I can blame them for having shitty taste in what they like though. They shouldn’t. This is exactly what fans of these shows are worried about and why they may view moe as ‘killing the industry’ or at least, the aspects of the industry that interest them.”
This is feeling of entitlement is unwarranted, moe shows have a fanbase that support it in japan and shounen adventures (naruto/bleach/one piece/full metal alchemist) are mainstream so those will exist without end. The remaining material is niche of a niche since anime isn’t really mainstream as much as tv shows.